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Alfarabi's Hermeneutics of Religion: Contemporary Relevance of His Perspectives on Freedom of Religion

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Alfarabi's Hermeneutics of Religion: Contemporary Relevance of His Perspectives on Freedom of Religion Alfarabi's Hermeneutics of Religion: Contemporary Relevance of His Perspectives on Freedom of Religion Osman Bilen Faculty of Theology, Dokuz Eylül University Adnan Süvari Mah. 108/2 Sk. No: 20 35140 Karabağlar, Izmir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] Abstract: Contemporary debates on freedom of religion are based on the following premises: a) Human beings are born free, as unique individuals with distinct personalities shaped by natural and social influences; b) human rationality, being the seat of human freedoms, is universal; c) Religion, and hence freedom thereof, might as well be relegated to the realm of individual consciousness. This explains the reference to “the freedom of consciousness and belief” in many international and legal documents. d) Therefore as an individual human right, freedom of religion, consisting of one’s right to uphold any belief, dogma, conviction or practice, must be protected against external coercion and interference of any sort. So, the question arises as to the nature of freedom of religion; does it belong inside or outside the realm of human rights? It appears that once a religion is perceived from a majority perspective, it is positioned outside and, hence, falls under the political rights - and if it is perceived from a minority perspective or from the point of view of the latecomers to a country, it is positioned inside. It comes easier for some adherents of different religious traditions to try to devalue all the “other religions” in a spirit of competition for influencing public opinion rather than focusing on the common issues facing all religions alike. Freedom of religion is unquestionably one of these issues at stake now. In this paper, I intend to provide a short analysis of the philosophical perspectives developed by some Muslim philosophers on the question of freedom of religion. Since freedom of religion is a social and first-order political issue, it must be dealt with in the theoretical context of social and political philosophy. But contemporary philosophy has almost severed its ties with religion. To the modern view, philosophy involves rational reflection on the nature of things and religion is concerned with practices based on revealed doctrines which are presumably impervious to rational scrutiny. However, I will attempt to argue that freedom of religion can only be resolved by a philosophical perspective on truth, which was the nature of philosophy as understood by some Muslim philosophers, like Alfarabi and Avicenna. We cannot analyze freedom of religion within a single religious perspective, nor one philosophical perspective on modernity. The perspective of these Muslim philosophers of 10th to 13th century are relevant here because for them, philosophy was not just a rational discourse, as it is for us today, but also a matter of academic exchange or statements; it was about primarily ways involving ‘practice of spiritual exercises with the aim of the transformation of the self by the acquisition of wisdom.” Keywords: al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Practical truth, Muslim philosophy, Philosophy of religion, Negative freedom, Enligtenment, Freedom of religion, Hermeneutics of religion. 34 Humanities Bulletin, Volume 1, Number 1, 2018 Issues Concerning the Definition of Freedom and Religion Hegel draws attention to ambiguities in the definition of freedom. For Hegel, since freedom has no content and it is an empty concept, there will be no definition of freedom from its substance or its negation. Only a literal meaning can apply to it. “No idea is so generally recognized as indefinite, ambiguous, and open to the greatest misconceptions (…) as the idea of Freedom: none in the common currency with so little appreciation of its meaning.” (Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind 1971, 239). Little needs to be added to Hegel’s remarks, except that freedom is also confused with liberty. Common public usage, however, confounds the term ‘liberty’ with that of ‘freedom’ by defining it as the lack of restraint. It is in this common sense that freedom here only means political and social freedom. If one were to look for a clear definition of freedom or were to ask a series of questions designed to elicit a working definition of freedom in modern philosophy, the answer would most likely be in line with solid liberal individualistic terms. One of the modern philosophers who gives such a liberal individualistic definition is Isaiah Berlin. In his Two Concepts of Liberty, he argues that “we should not confuse freedom with every good thing, such as a decent income and life chances. Everything is what it is, and not something else. Freedom means lack of restraint.” Berlin calls it “negative liberty”. For him, this is a bad definition because the definition focuses on the limits of one’s actions. “To know my freedom,” writes Berlin, “I have but to ask how many doors are open to me, and how wide they are open. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.” (Berlin 1969, lvi) Defining freedom of religion is not simple either, rather more complex and complicated. The issue is primarily related to human beings, it is about human freedom in its relation to having certain beliefs and acts intertwined together in what we call religion. From the psychological perspective, we need to define our subject matter in terms of a) freedom of will, b) freedom of thought, c) freedom of expression c) freedom of worship d) freedom from coercion and e) moral freedom of personal development and f) freedom of reason. How will we define freedom of religion by emphasizing positive freedoms in the sense freedom “of, to and for” holding beliefs about God, the meaning of life, and of nature? Or should we define it negatively as freedom from, for instance, oppression by individuals, by society or by means of political order itself etc.? Can one measure freedom or lack of it against rational truth itself? These questions are all relevant to the issue of freedom of religion. We also need an operative definition of religion that will be applicable to the freedom of diverse adherence of religions. The premises on which the contemporary debates on freedom of religion are based are the following: a) All human beings are born free. b) Societies are made up of individuals with unique and distinct personalities, by a social contract for the pursuit of common good. c) However, natural and social influences shape the individual behavior and social order. d) The reason is the inborn universal faculty that all human beings share. e) The only reliable source and the boundary of human freedoms is individual conscience and the laws of a society. c) Religion 35 O. Bilen - Alfarabi's Hermeneutics of Religion: Contemporary Relevance of His Perspectives on Freedom of Religion and, hence, freedom thereof might as well be protected by laws and yet it must be relegated to the conscience of individuals -hence the references to “freedom of belief and consciousness” in most international legal documents; d) Therefore, as an individual human right, freedom of religion consisting of individual’s right to uphold any belief, dogma and conviction and practice thereof must be protected against external coercion and interference of any sort. If not all, but the fundamentals of these premises depends on the tacitly accepted logical fallacies, but this is not our concern here. However, it should be noted that these premises are sublimated as the basic tenets of modernity. The fallacy we will remark in passing consists of the tautological assumption that as if individual consciousness is a jar of cookies received as a gift, one can eat without opening the container. While in almost all academic circles, on which the psychology’s scholarship is based, firm theories presuming it to be an unquestionable fact that from early on the human conscience is shaped to a greater extent by the individual response to all sorts of external factors such as nature, family, and social environment. Can we, then, still talk about an individual consciousness left intact and able to be protected by the law, when individuals reach the legal age? These kinds of legal statements are fallacies in the sense that atheists such as Dawkins declares a legal battle for protection of underage children’s conscience from parental religious influence and deleting all religious reference to children of all age, i.e. reference in the international and national documents as Buddhist, Muslim or Christian should be cleared. So, the parent should have no right or privilege to teach their children any religion or faith of their choice. The second fallacy is related to a form of tacit classification of individual’s freedom into two kinds: freedom of interior and exterior actions. Freedom of conscience, thought and belief is related to an individual as a person, whereas freedom of expression is related to an individual as a member of society. This is important because depending on our definition of ‘religion’ it could be related to social and, therefore, political freedoms or to individual freedoms as an interior act of conscience. So, the next question arises as to the nature of freedom; is freedom of religion interior or exterior to human action - that is religious action (assuming that there was a category called action)? It appears that since religion itself is subject to multiple interpretations so is the realm of its freedoms. Recent legislative acts and initiatives in several countries of Europe, for instance, have been interested in understanding the belief system, conduct and dress codes of Muslims. Ever since the controversies about the representation of the Prophet of Islam in literature, visual arts or media (particularly with the Salman Rushdie affair) several experts and observers have tried to suggest ways to regulate people’s religious actions, interior and exterior.
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